The development and widespread acceptance of electronic media, the Internet, and various other methods of electronic communication have made it significantly easier for providers of products and services to disseminate offers related to their products and services to a wide range of potential customers. However, one problem that has arisen, largely due to the relatively low cost, ease, and potential effectiveness, of distributing offers via systems such as the Internet, is that the average consumer is now so inundated with often irrelevant product and service offers that the offers have become background noise. Consequently, using current methods, product and service offers are often largely, if not entirely, ignored by the potential customers. This is clearly not a desirable situation for the distributors/providers of the offers. However, the situation is also far from ideal for the consumers given that many offers that are desirable and valuable to given consumer are lost or ignored in the blizzard of irrelevant offers a typical consumer is subjected to on an almost daily basis.
In addition, due to the fact that many widely distributed offers are not relevant to given consumer, a growing number of consumers not only ignore offers presented to them, but find the seemingly endless presentation of offers a significant annoyance in their life. Since many offers are electronic media based offers provided to consumers through the Internet, and third-party platforms such as search engines, webpages, software applications and systems, and various other electronic media based platforms, the annoyance of a consumer is potentially even more problematic since it is highly likely that the consumer will become equally annoyed, if not more annoyed, with the platform through which offers are being presented.
In addition, when a provider of a product or service disseminates offers to consumers in a more less blanket manner, it is quite possible that the product or service that is the subject matter of the offer is already owned by the consumer; has already been turned down, or otherwise passed up, by the consumer; is a product or service for which the consumer simply does not qualify; is a product or service equivalent to a product or service already owned by the consumer; or is otherwise irrelevant or redundant with respect to a given consumer. When this is the case, there is a very high probability that the consumer will come to consider the offer as a waste of their time which, in turn, results in a very high probability that the consumer will become annoyed with not only the offer itself, but also the product and service offered, and the provider of the product and service. This negative impression can remain in the mind of the consumer and cost the provider of the product of the service a present customer and/or future sales. Clearly this is the opposite of the effect desired.
As discussed above, there is a long-standing technical need in the electronic offer distribution arts for a technical solution to the technical problem of only recommending offers to consumers that are relevant to the individual consumers in terms of the interest level of the consumers, the qualifications of the consumers, the needs of the consumers, and the likelihood of the consumers accepting the offer. In addition, the introduction of the Internet as a platform for the distribution of electronic media based offers has made the need for a technical solution to the problem of recommending only relevant offers to consumers an even more immediate and important issue.